This is how far we’ve come: An affordable new neighborhood eatery, warm and pretty but unpretentious, serving humanely raised natural Niman meats, precious Jidori chicken, local organic veggies in thoroughly tasty simple dishes — am I back in San Francisco, or have I landed in Hog Heaven?

Ritual Tavern is closely linked to the nearby Linkery, that staunch purveyor of ethical food culture a few blocks south. Mike Flores, who owns Ritual with his wife Staci Wilkins, is a Linkery “graduate,” and so is chef Glenn Farrington. They’ve carried their culinary idealism across University Avenue to the north side of 30th Street, to the site of a former Greek-Mexican eatery called Mailo’s.

The space has been thoroughly renovated to look like an Old World pub. One room of the Ritual houses an attractive bar. Next to it — but happily separate, in case the bar gets noisy, as bars may do — is an attractive, publike dining room with a bare floor, a dark green wall or two, dark-stained wooden accents, and well-spaced tables topped with white cloths. Soft, spacey rock was playing on the sound system when I arrived; later, it was replaced by bebop, still played softly. The staff believe that conversation is an integral part of a civilized dinner. Ah, Grownupville.

I ate there during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the populations of San Diego and the Midwest switch places, so I couldn’t bring my usual horde of hungry Vikings; all were scattered to the freezing regions to visit various Aged P’s or grown children. Happily, my friend Marciela was still in town and looking for (culinary) adventure. As a duo we couldn’t eat our way through the menu, but what we did eat told us we’d hit a winner on every front: food, atmosphere, comfort, price. The menu is short and looks deceptively simple, but what emerges is pleasure on a plate.

We began with a round of house onion rings, with an airy batter leavened by Ballast Point pale ale. The rings came with a remoulade dip — not mustardy-hot green New Orleans remoulade, but pink, mild, and rich. The same light batter robes a vegetable assortment and a shrimp appetizer if you fancy more fried food. We had to try the scampi (haven’t had that for ages). Tender, sweet Gulf of Mexico shrimp floated in a dark, lemony broth, with toasted ciabatta from Sadie Rose Bakery alongside for dipping. Marci and I tried to guess what the mysterious undertones were: Worcestershire, or maybe Thai fish sauce. Neither one, the chef told me later: “It’s just the classic scampi recipe, with shallots, garlic, sherry, olive oil, and butter.” It tasted better and richer than that.

Entrée possibilities include a burger and fries (with house-made ketchup, sweetened with cane sugar instead of evil high-fructose corn syrup), catfish and chips, pan-fried Jidori chicken breast with pineapple glaze, and a tempting shepherd’s pie with a load of veggies that includes green beans and sweet, seductive parsnips. (There are vegan versions of several of these choices.) There are one or two specials every night as well.

I couldn’t pass up the temptation to try “Saddlebrush Gumbo,” so named because the chef is a Long Island Yankee cooking a Southern dish (see “About the Chef” for details). As y’all probably know, I’m a strict constructionist when it comes to Creole or Cajun gumbo and can get testy about ersatz renditions — but this is not a Louisiana gumbo at all. To start, instead of the “Cajun trinity” of green peppers, celery, and onions, the chef uses carrots — carrots in gumbo! Second, it isn’t really a soup, more a thick étouffée (“smothered” dish). Then, too, there’s neither okra nor filé in it.

But gumbo isn’t restricted to Louisiana — it’s common throughout the South, from the Carolinas to Texas, with a number of regional variations. When I spoke to the chef, I asked what color he made his roux, to get a hint of what he was doing with the dish and where it might have come from: It’s a golden roux, he told me, made with bacon fat and flour, lighter in color than Louisiana’s typical range of peanut butter to mahogany. That alone points to origins in Alabama, or more likely Florida. The carrots? Here’s my theory: Florida’s zillions of retired New Yorkers (including many of my relatives) have never eaten okra in their lives — but carrots they know and love. So perhaps this recipe stems from the southeast Florida culinary region that runs from Century Village (where an alligator once slithered out of a canal and ate somebody’s grandson) to South Miami Beach. Jewish Mother Gumbo, maybe?

By any name, it’s wonderfully good eating — a thick, full-flavored sauce robing Mexican shrimp, Niman’s semi-spicy andouille sausage, and reasonably tender Jidori chicken breast, with a delicious, wholesome backbeat from organic long-grain wild rice, instead of the sticky white stuff.

The highest-priced item ($20) is a lamb sirloin with a rosemary-Port reduction sauce. It arrived cooked to a perfect medium-rare and came with “potato goat cheese dumplings” (that is, gourmet Tater Tots) and fresh, simple spinach from Crow’s Pass Farms in Temecula. Marci and I agreed: It’s a charming dish we’d gladly cook for ourselves if only we could get this quality of lamb at our local Vons (fat chance).

Most of the dishes are designed to go well with the awesome beer list. There are only a dozen-odd wines (the short list of whites could use some bolstering), and they change frequently, but the sweet and charming servers and bartender can help you come up with the right pour for whatever you’re eating.

For dessert, we were tempted by the artisan cheese board but, feeling full, succumbed instead to the house bread pudding. It’s soft, sturdy, and flavorful, loaded with raisins and glazed with a sugar syrup dusted with mace and nutmeg. You can get it topped with all-natural gelato if you like. (Minus gelato, any leftovers make a grand breakfast.) Beer lovers may want to try the outrageous-sounding Stone Smoked Porter Shake — an ice-cream “soda” of vanilla gelato in dark beer. The Caffé Calabria organic French-press coffee is rich and fine, including the decaf.

Googling the Ritual, I encountered one review that remarked that the place seemed less ambitious than the nearby and somewhat similar Jayne’s Gastropub (a younger, scenier, excruciatingly louder take on a British “local”). In some ways, that’s true — Jayne’s ventures more widely into international dishes, especially in its appetizers, whereas Ritual’s more limited, concentrated menu cleaves closer to updates of old-style pub grub. But talking over the comparison, Marci and I decided that Ritual’s ambitions are simply different, and higher in some ways: They have more to do with consistent quality and careful cooking than the length or breadth of the menu. Having eaten at both, we enjoyed Ritual’s food better, and trusted the chef more. (And we certainly preferred the quiet ambience that let us gossip to our heart’s content.) If you live nearby and prefer an atmosphere that favors civilized discourse over a perpetual party vibe, this cozy tavern could easily become your hangout — your new weekly ritual.

ABOUT THE CHEF

The story is familiar: Chef Glenn Farrington came from a family with many generations of food pros behind him — his great-grandmother was a private chef at an estate on Long Island’s deluxe North Shore, and his ancestors in Ireland had often done the same (though in those days they were called “cooks”). As a teenager, he started out dishwashing in a neighborhood eatery and realized swiftly that restaurants were his natural environment.

He moved to San Diego 14 years ago. “The North Shore of Long Island wasn’t working for me. It’s remote from everything, and I just couldn’t see staying there and buying a house I couldn’t afford and having a bunch of kiddies to drive me crazy,” he says. “So I moved to Mission Beach, became a surfer, and lost my Long Island drawl.” He worked many front-of-the-house jobs at local restaurants, including Cafe Westgate and Trattoria Acqua, and gradually slipped into cooking, paying attention to what he saw in restaurant kitchens and learning from watching television cooking shows. “I was married for a few years and was a house-husband pretty much, and that’s how I learned to pay attention to a lot of shows and hone a lot of my things at home. Then I was working in the kitchen at Cafe 222 when I met Jay [owner of the Linkery], and he asked me to come to the Linkery. I couldn’t say no.” When Linkery co-worker Mike Flores opened Ritual three months ago, moving there was a natural next step.

I asked him about the Saddlebrush Gumbo — where did he get the name? “The term dates back to the Civil War,” Farrington said. “People who were originally from north of the Mason-Dixon Line moved back north when the Civil War started, and then, after the war ended, it was safe to come back down south. The Yankees who moved back were called ‘saddlebrush.’ I adapted this name because, the week we opened, there was an online review saying how it was a shame there were carrots in the gumbo. Another comment said, ‘Yeah, must’ve been a Yankee!’ So, being from New York — a true Yankee — I had to call it Saddlebrush. A customer who was eating it here told me the term and suggested the name. I had a great-great-great-grandfather who was a general for the South, so it only seemed fitting.

“I did a lot of research on gumbo, because I’ve always understood gumbo to be real serious business. You’ve got to do it right or don’t do it at all. And I found a lot of recipes with carrots. The authentic gumbo recipes — 150 different recipes — all varied. They all had some kind of roux, most had some kind of pork, chicken, seafood. So we decided to use andouille, Jidori chicken, and Gulf of Mexico shrimp, ’cause if you were from Louisiana, that’s the kind of shrimp you’d get. And when I tried the carrots in it, we had some people from Louisiana, real hard-line, tasting it, and they said, ‘Don’t change a thing.’

“My food philosophy is for us to use the best ingredients we can possibly find — especially with produce. It’s really key to have extremely fresh produce and as much organic as we can muster. We get our meats shipped from Niman through a meat jobber in L.A. We’re really strong believers in no hormones, etc. — as ethical in the animal-rearing processes as possible. It does cost more, but we manage — we don’t want to compromise the integrity of our mission.”

The Ritual Tavern

*** (Very Good)

4095 30th Street (north of University Avenue), North Park, 619-283-1618, ritualtavern.com.

HOURS: Tuesday–Sunday, 5:30–11:20 p.m.

PRICES: Appetizers, $5–$11; mains, $11–$20; desserts, $3–$7

CUISINE AND BEVERAGES: Classic pub grub plus more exotic ventures, all made with humanely raised Niman meats, Jidori chicken, locally grown organic vegetables. Vast list of local and international artisan beers; a dozen affordable international wines, nearly all available by the glass. Soft drinks include Mexican Coca-Cola (made with cane sugar, not corn syrup).

PICK HITS: Shrimp scampi; beer-battered onion rings, veggies, or shrimp; “Saddlebrush” gumbo; lamb sirloin; nightly specials; bread pudding. Also good bets: shepherd’s pie, Stone Smoked Porter shake.

NEED TO KNOW: Small parking lot behind restaurant. Cozy, conversational atmosphere. Several vegan and gluten-free menu items.